Ok, ... thinking cap on... tick, tick, tick...

I have assumed this was on Slackware, is that correct?

How did you install it (i.e., slackbuild, from RPM or deb, etc.)?

Yes. Slackware64-14. Used deb2tgz on astrill-setup-linux64.deb to make a tgz, then makepkg /tmp/astrill-setup-linux64.tgz then pkgtool.

Ok, let's see if it is writing anything to the syslog or stderr.

As normal user in terminal start it up (by the way, what is the executable file that you start with?).

Then either root or sudo...

Then again let's redirect stderr to the shell...

If either of those says anything interesting post it back here.

And one other thought - I wonder if it writes a config file to the user home directory? If so (see if there is one in /root/) but not in the regular user, create one empty in the regular user home and make it 777 permissions.

Now it's saying my user is not is sudoers file. But it wasn't saying that before. I tried agian to do

and it said the user is already in wheel. I checked /etc/sudoers agian to make sure the %wheel... line is uncommented and it is. Why is this suddenly happening?

@hegira: I will need to shut down here shortly, so wanted to add some final thoughts...

I have been googling this all evening, unfortunately most of what I find are your own question posts.

ruario made a comment in one thread about the.deb being a crappy package. Not sure what he saw that he didn't like and I have not opened it myself, but that might bear more looking.

On Slackware the /tmp directory should be 777, but verify that just in case...

I do not see any indication that it uses java, but just in case it does check your root and user $CLASSPATH to be sure they are the same (although as I say, I don't think it makes any use of java).

Another thing is the possibility that it makes use of something found in /usr/sbin/, so that it is only on root's path.

Assuming that your user has sudo rights, you might try this:

If that works you might try it without the sudo - if that works just add /sbin to the user path.

Finally, just to be complete on the permissions, can you post the output of:

I can't tell you whay that is suddenly happening, but it is a clue! That sounds as if it is in fact trying to use the wheel group permissions.

Im ust sign off now - sorry. But I think we are on the right track. I would be curious to know if the /sbin path affects it. Since it is a network app it might try to directly access the routing table or network devices using an /sbin application. Since it is a .deb it might assume things about the wheel group that are not true for Slackware. So I think getting the right group and or PATH is the key.

I'll check in early tomorrow - good luck! Thanks for your patience!

Run the following once (and only once) as root:

You will now be able to run Astrill as a regular user. I got this from the deb postinst.

Edit: Actually, don't run 'asproxy --init' as it is retarded. I just ran an strace on it and have seen what it does.

1. It sets up various symlinks to liblsp.so and liblsp64.so in locations where Debian/Ubuntu would expect to find libs (which does not make sense on Slackware).
2. It sets the 'asproxy' setuid root (this is what allows the regular user to run the program)
3. It adds a broken (on Slackware at least) path in /etc/ld.so.preload (I presume this preload is needed by Astrill so that it can intercept all network connections to ensure they go through the Astrill VPN).

Instead of 'asproxy --init' which partially breaks a Slackware system you can either setuid 'asproxy' to root and manually add the correct file to /etc/ld.so.preload or instead see my reply to you in your other post.

Take ruario's advice from the above post, hopefully that will get it going.

I also intended to ask you to post the README from the top directory, and maybe the output of path/to/Astrill --help.

Usually a good idea but in this case it doesn't help as 'astrill --help' returns nothing (it just starts the program) and the README.TXT is not particularly useful:

You can get the packages from https://www.astrill.com/download.php but you will not be able to properly use it without an account. I don't have one myself. I had never heard of Astrill before yesterday when the OP mentioned them in another thread. I just downloaded the packages to have a look and try to help out.

P.S. Having looked at the rpm, deb and sh packages Astrill provide I see that they are all broken in multiple ways. I don't therefore have a great feeling about this company and would probably not use them myself.

Thanks for the additional input ruario1!

I'll try to grab the package sometime later today and have a look inside myself, although I doubt I'll see anything that you did not, and probably won't understand many things that you did see.

It seems the entry Astrill adds is broken on other distros as well. Hmm .. I don't have a great feeling about this software!

EDIT: Also problems with Astrill on Debian.

It seems you do not have to use the client that Astrill provides, they have setup instructions on how to use their VPN service with OpenVPN, PPTP or IPSec, using various clients.